Parapluie
by BloodStainsOnMyKisses
Summary: After a long night of waiting out the rain at a small bus stop, Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz become an unlikely pair of friends.


**Parapluie**

* * *

Only twenty minutes after Jemma left her dorm without her umbrella on a night that predicted rain did she realize her stupid mistake.

With her most precious possession in the bag on her back, she could not afford making this error, especially when her second biochem PhD graduation and admission into the S.H.I.E.L.D academy depended on it.

With the pouring streets of New York posing as the most dangerous place for her to be, Jemma Simmons quickly ran towards the nearest bus stop, and was glad when she found the glass compartment unlocked. It was a dark night, and not a trustworthy person was to be seen for miles. Frustrated at the night's events, she tried to recall any information on the local bus timings. This posed to be a particularly hard effort because she was not a regular bus user. When wearily looking around for any sort of possible escape she could without compromising her laptop's direct safety, Jemma saw none. She sat, and miserably checked her mobile. It received no cellular service.

People rushed past in a permanent hurry, blocking her exit. The rain thundered against the glass, and the lighting flashed across the skies, so she didn't bother trying to leave anyway. The wind howled outside, the trees, bristling, played with the glass walls of the bus stop. It wasn't peaceful. She pulled her feet onto the metallic bench with her, considering closing her eyes for a short while, when suddenly loud thunder was all she could hear. It startled her, but did not scare her. She had heard louder, ruder things as a child. She was used to it now.

She tried drying her hair as she waited for the bus, and soon after started playing with the locks. A half hour passed, and then another. By this time she had completed the last thirty three pages of her final dissertation, and had gone back to edit the second time. The rain ceased to stop. Her mobile stopped trying to find a signal. She became close to dozing off.

It was at this same moment that a drenched, swearing man stormed into the glass room, making her jump. She held her backpack in her hands now, ready to either bolt if needed, or swing. She watched him out of her peripheral view as he sat beside her.

He discarded his heavy gray hoodie on the dirty bench, and his lopsided, broken umbrella down beside it. Just by looking at it, Jemma knew it would need a lot of working on to fix.

His white button-down clung to his skin. He did not acknowledge her. Not yet, at least.

When he pulled his beanie off, more water dripped down his neck. Jemma saw his skin prickle as it came into contact with the cold liquid. The watch on his wrist was removed, inspected for damage, and polished dry. He pulled his shoes off, discarded the water inside them, and put them back on. From out of his duffel bag, he pulled out a laptop. Much to her surprise, the logo on the back of it read _S.H.I.E.L.D_, just like hers did. Getting comfortable, he laid his back to one glass wall, and spread his legs out in front of him on the bench, almost exactly how she was sitting. As he became directly opposite her, she took a good, long look at his face, trying to figure out if she'd seen him before. When she thought she was staring too much, she looked down at her own computer, but felt compelled to stare at him again.

It was then that cold wind swept into the small compartment, and he shivered. Not long after, he twitched, which is when he saw her face for the first time.

"Oh... Hi," he said, turning red, but politely extending his hand after sitting properly on the benches, "I'm Leo, Leo Fitz."

She took note of his Scottish accent, but recognized his English descent. He looked about her age.

She firmly took his hand and shook it. "Hi. Jemma S-"

"In Hebrew, that means '_little dove_', did you kn-... Sorry, do go on. " Leo turned redder as he realized what he'd said. He scratched the back of his neck. "You were saying?"

Jemma smiled at him, turning pink at his words but continuing on for both their sakes as if it had not happened . She had never known anyone as awkward a conversationalist as the one in front of her. "Jemma Simmons, working for S.H.I.E.L.D Level 0. How about you? I noticed your laptop."

Leo smiled knowingly and nodded. "Level 0 as well. Working on my final PhD thesis so I can get in, in fact."

"Ah. I'm working on my second for the same reason." She said. Jemma looked down at the ground, pink, obviously unaware that she was going to say that next. It was something to be proud of, but she didn't mention it often. Especially not as much as her mother did. She decided to change the topic and bring it back to him, and she saw the impressed look as she looked at him again, "What are you majoring in?"

Suddenly something in the seventeen year old's face lit up as he began detailing his major. It was a look Jemma understood, she could only imagine she herself began to look that way every time she was questioned about her studies. It was heartwarming to see such a look on another's face. Unbeknownst to her, it was the same thing he observed on her when she started elaborating on the steps of biosynthesis, something she had studied in great depth when she was fifteen years old and working on her first doctorate - two years ago. His topic was an interesting one, one she even could say she liked but to a limit: Weapon Engineering.

It became knowledge, as they kept talking, that they were both the youngest ever PhD holders of the academy, and only in the top 10 youngest of the world, surpassed by only five others. Then it all became funny: the two smart, above-average, high-level IQ PhD holders, and soon-to-be students of the S.H.I.E.L.D Academy were stuck in a bus stop with no possible way out, and only because one had an intense fear of wetting her laptop, and the other a broken umbrella. The boy beside her tried his best not to look like he was weirded out by her, as her sudden need to laugh had confused him. He became very self-conscious and began to wonder if she was indeed laughing at him.

When she conveyed her thoughts to him, it was his turn to crack a cheeky smile, but then there was silence again.

"Could you perhaps do me a favour?" Fitz mentioned uncertainly after several minutes of only hearing the rain, as he clutched his arms. "C-could I maybe borrow a cardigan, if that's alright with you?"

A brief smile began to ghost over her face, until it grew into a full-blown laugh.

"This isn't funny, Simmons!" He exclaimed.

"No, no I'm sorry, of course you can borrow one. Here," she took out for him a hoodie from the inside of her bag, wrapping it over his shoulders so he didn't have to move from his shivering position, "take this."

"Th-thanks."

* * *

Several hours passed after that, during which Leo seemed to get warmer and the two had separately returned to their work. When Jemma's battery died, she left her laptop alone and stared outside the glass walls. It was still raining vigorously. It was only when her mind was fully unoccupied with her dissertation that she realized that she was starving. Her stomach made a sound that meant it agreed.

She hoped her new friend sitting not so far away from her hadn't heard. It was to her dismay that he did, and he acknowledged it with an "I'm starving!"

"Do you think they could deliver a pizza here?"

After almost an hour of rummaging within the glass room, Fitz had finally succeeded in getting in phone service. He ordered a large pepperoni pizza to satisfy them both. The food came in just under forty five minutes and they did not waste time beginning to eat.

"Something else, if you don't mind?" Fitz then asked through a bite of his pizza, almost as if he were unsure whether or not he should have, "Could you perchance assist me in fixing this _dunderheid_ umbrella?

And so they began to try and find the smallest of things to help them do so. An advantage of having an engineering student was unlimited; he knew exactly what to do and what to use, and in a matter of no time, they had configured a string of dental floss and three toothpicks provided by the delivery man to hold up the large and newly repaired umbrella.

By the time they had finished with their impromptu project, the sun was starting to come up. They had spent the majority of the night, and they were both exceptionally worn out. Simmons decided it was okay to put her head down for some time. As Fitz tried out their umbrella outside, Jemma had taken rest on a pile of their laptop bags. She watched as Fitz opened up their new contraption to the heavy winds of New York. To his utmost delight, it had worked!

"Simmons!" he called, "Jemma, it works!"

And so the pair left the small bus stop waiting area together, heading towards S.H.I.E.L.D.'s agency a few blocks away.

* * *

Every time Jemma's daughter asked her the story of how she and her daddy met, this was exactly what she told her.


End file.
